UAlbany takes bus ride from hell

Sounds like the UAlbany men had a fun ride home from their 90-71 loss at Sacred Heart on Tuesday.

The Great Danes watched game film of the first half during the three-hour drive back to Albany.

“No choice,” UAlbany coach Will Brown said. ”If we would have had played better we wouldn’t have had to watch it.”

UAlbany then reviewed the second half on Wednesday, although the team didn’t practice.

”Just rewind, play, rewind, play,” Brown said. ”Stress the good and the bad. There wasn’t a whole lot of good, but stress the good and the bad. The tape doesn’t lie. Sometimes when you correct kids and you get on them, sometimes I don’t think they really fully realize that when you watch the video, it’s glaring.”

Brown said the loss is proof UAlbany can not yet be counted as an elite mid-major Division I program. He said the Great Danes are still finding themselves after graduating two starters, center Kirsten Zoellner and guard Lucious Jordan, and sixth man Levi Levine.

”The strides we’ve made as a program are tremendous,” Brown said. ”But to consider us along the lines of Bucknell, and Winthrop, and Gonzaga and Creighton, that’s not realistic right now. We’re still a ways away from that point. It took us a while to get to the point we got to last year, and we lost three very good players that helped get us to that point.”

Brown called his team ”a work in progress” in his postgame comments Tuesday.

Brown wants to address the lack of production at center, where sophomore starter Jimmie Covington and freshman backup Brett Gifford have scored a combined total of three points this season, all from Gifford.

Brown said he didn’t play Gifford against Sacred Heart because he had a bad case of the flu. He said he expects Gifford to ”play a ton of minutes” against UConn.

That could mean the 6-foot-11 Gifford starts at center over the 6-foot-7 Covington. Brown said he has also considered 6-8 sophomore Brian Connelly, a backup power forward, who is averaging 5.3 points and 3.7 assists per game.

”The guy that deserves to start (at center) is Brian Connelly, but I like his energy off the bench,” Brown said.

Against UConn, Brown said the Great Danes must find a way to draw 7-3 Huskies center Hasheem Thabeet away from the basket. Thabeet, a freshman, has blocked 23 shots in four games.

That means playing someone at center who can shoot, and either Gifford or Connelly would fit that bill better than Covington. Or UAlbany could put a small lineup on the floor and use starting power forward Brent Wilson, who is 6-8, at center. He had a career-high 29 points, including six 3-pointers, against Sacred Heart.